Journalist denies murdering his wife

Prosecutors in Dubai are seeking the death penalty for a British journalist accused of murdering his wife.

Francis Matthew, the editorat-large of a prominent Englishlanguage newspaper, pleaded not guilty yesterday to a premeditated murder charge.

Police allege Matthew, 61, who worked for Gulf News, beat his 62-year-old wife Jane to death with a hammer, before telling detectives that robbers killed her.

After the hearing in a Dubai courtroom, Matthew’s lawyer, Ali al-Shamsi, said they are looking to get a minimum sentence for his client.

On July 4, Dubai police said they were called to Matthew’s three-bedroom villa in Dubai’s Jumeirah neighbourhood.

There, they say they found his wife of more than 30 years dead and the editor told them robbers broke into the home and killed her.

During a later interrogation, however, police say Matthew told them his wife had grown angry with him because they were in debt and needed to move.

Matthew said he got angry when his wife called him “a loser”, according to police.

Matthew told police his wife pushed him during the argument.

He then got a hammer and struck her twice in the head, killing her, police said.

The next morning, Matthew tried to make it look like the house had been robbed and later went to work like nothing had happened, throwing the hammer in a nearby tip, police said.